University of Washington Graduate Student Government Uses IRV

February 13, 2002

Hi. I'm the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) at the University of Washington. --That's the student government for graduate students at UW. Anyway, we just passed a resolution to do all of our single member elections by IRV, and to support IRV in general. The resolution is below. I believe the undergraduate student government (ASUW) here is going to be also supporting IRV for its future elections.

-David NixonGPSS Pres and IRV supporter!

-------------------------------GPSS RESOLUTION 14.01-02

A RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF INSTANT RUN-OFF VOTING

WHEREAS GPSS recognizes the importance of fair and democratic elections, and

WHEREAS single-member plurality elections allow for the election of a candidate who was not voted for by the majority of voters, and

WHEREAS a system of Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) would prevent this by making sure that the will of the majority is expressed in the outcome of elections,

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDENT SENATE

THAT GPSS will use IRV in all of its single-member elections where there are 3 or more candidates, and

THAT Article V Section G Clause 1f of the GPSS Bylaws be changed to read,

"If there are more than 2 persons running for a single office, Instant Run-Off Voting shall be used: Each voter shall rank the candidates in order of most to least preferred. A candidate receiving more than 50% of first-choice votes wins the election. In the case that no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, the candidate receiving the fewest number of first-choice votes shall be eliminated and ballots listing that candidate as their first choice shall be recounted using their second choice candidate. This process shall repeat until one candidate receives more than 50% of the votes.", and

THAT GPSS supports the adoption of IRV in other single-member elections.